Sarah Rothschild and Michael Schakow: United by a Ring That Means So Much

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CreditEmily Wren Photography

By Vincent M. Mallozzi

Nov. 8, 2015

Sarah Helene Rothschild, a daughter of Marjorie U. Rothschild and Trip Rothschild of Potomac, Md., was married Saturday evening to Michael Schakow, the son of Charna R. Schakow and Peter Schakow of Albany, Calif. Harvey Varga, a cousin of the groom who received authorization from the District of Columbia to preside, officiated at the Sequoia restaurant in Washington.

The bride, 32, is taking her husband’s name. She works in Washington as the communications director for Senator Joe Donnelly, Democrat of Indiana. She graduated from Northwestern.

Her father is the associate general counsel for licensing and regulation at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Rockville, Md., for which the bride’s mother, now retired, was a senior attorney.

The groom, 36, is a lawyer in Washington. He was previously a litigation associate in the Washington office of the New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. He graduated from Brandeis, from which he also received a master’s degree in political science. He received a law degree from N.Y.U.

His mother teaches Judaic studies and Hebrew at Temple Isaiah in Lafayette, Calif. His father is the president and a founder of Hope or Cope, a company based in San Francisco that offers economic solutions to challenges caused by global climate change.

The couple met at a Washington restaurant in June 2014 at a birthday party for a mutual friend. After the party, they left the restaurant as part of a small group, and Mr. Schakow suggested that everyone go out for some late-night pizza.

“I spoke to Sarah earlier at the party, and she had such a great presence and personality,” he said. “She seemed like someone I would be interested in.”

But his invitation was graciously refused by Ms. Rothschild. “I really enjoyed talking to him, and we seemed to have a connection and a real rapport,” she said. “But it was late at night and I was tired, so I said no. But that didn’t mean I was hoping I would never see him again.”

Unbeknown to her, Mr. Schakow was planning to ask her out again, but before he got that chance, he and Ms. Rothschild were automatically matched with each other a week later on Hinge, a dating app that connects people who have mutual Facebook friends.

“I was really surprised,” she said. “ I thought it would be great to see him again.”

Mr. Schakow was more than surprised. “It was like a shot of adrenaline,” he said.

They were soon on a first date, at another restaurant in Washington, that went so well, it led to a flurry of dates over the next two weeks that included a visit to a comedy club, a scavenger-hunt race around the National Mall and after-dinner drinks in the dark on Ms. Rothschild’s roof deck in the Woodley Park section of Washington. Soon after, they began dating steadily.

On a trip to Copenhagen in June, Mr. Schakow proposed at a restaurant there, and Ms. Rothschild said yes, to great applause from the other diners.

He then gave her a diamond ring that belonged to his great-grandmother, who died in the Treblinka extermination camp in 1942. His great-grandfather had tried unsuccessfully to use the ring to bribe an SS officer to release his wife and daughter as they awaited deportation from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka. His great-grandfather survived in hiding, with the ring, until Warsaw’s liberation in 1945.

“I didn't know the ring existed until he gave it to me,” Ms. Rothschild said. “When he told me the back story, it was just chilling.”

Mr. Schakow said: “It meant the world to me to be able to give her that ring, which is an heirloom that has a very special and significant place in my family’s history. I told Sarah that the ring was the most meaningful thing I had in my life to give her. And I knew I was giving it to the right person because it now belongs to another member of our family.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page ST21 of the New York edition with the headline: United by a Ring That Means So Much. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe